Over 100 CFOs from across East Africa came together at Villa Rosa Kempinski in Nairobi for the much-anticipated CFO of the Future Summit, held by the CFO East Africa community, where they discussed the evolving role of finance executives.
The event kicked off with a welcome from co-founder and community manager KC Rottok Chesaina, who provided a progress report on the growth of the community in East Africa over the past 10 months of its existence.
“I must thank you for your enthusiastic participation in the four summits we have hosted in Nairobi. It is also great to see several CFOs who have travelled here from Tanzania following our launch summit in Dar es Salaam in May. We look forward to a similar event in Kampala, Uganda in a week’s time,” he said.
The chief finance and value management officer of Stanbic Bank Kenya and South Sudan Dennis Musau spoke next. He explained the concept of value management and noted that the role of the CFO had changed so much over the years that the term CFO does not fully capture the responsibilities placed on finance leaders currently.
The group CFO of MTN Uganda, Andrew Bugembe, then took to the podium and shared his experiences in the financial leadership of Uganda’s leading telecommunications services provider. He emphasised the need for CFOs to prioritise digitilasation of processes for them to be effective in their roles.
Juma Kimori, the CFO of Tanzania’s most profitable bank explained the role he has played at NMB in its quest to achieve cost efficiency rather than cost control.
“A successful CFO is a business partner to the organisation rather than a compliance officer. At NMB, we have managed to achieve an astounding return on equity of 29 percent by ensuring that we view costs as investments rather than mere expenditure. According to an EY survey, over 70 percent of CFOs report that their role in investor relations has increased over the past three years. Over 80 percent of CFOs report that their role has become more strategic and therefore future CFOs will be depended upon to reimagine the future of their entities rather than report on the present and the past,” Juma said.
During the panel discussion, Kinya Kimotho, the finance and strategy director of partner emerging markets at Diageo and Juzer Adamjee, the CFO of Bobmill Industries, explained to the captive audience how their roles had changed significantly in the decades that they have held finance director positions. Kevin Nyakeri of ICEA Lion left the audience in stitches with anecdotes of mistakes he made in the boardroom as he sought to expand his influence and define his success factors.
East Africa’s leading CFOs then had an opportunity to mingle around cocktail tables, savouring a lavish pass-around dinner before splitting into two groups for in-depth discussions on the evening's topic.
Nomahlubi Sonjica, CIO South Africa community manager and host of one of the roundtables, capped off the memorable evening with a stirring performance of African music icon Miriam Makeba’s Click Song, which was met with enthusiastic applause.
The event was sponsored by principal partner EY East Africa who were represented by Aditi Nayar, David Kinyanjui, Denis Mugisha, Fred Odero and Manasses Biwott. Associate partners who threw their weight behind the CFO East Africa community were PaySpace by Deel, ALN Kenya and Adili.
